TransAmGTA88

Ok, I know I'm not the first to put a procharger in a third-gen f-body so I'm sure someone has run into the samething that I'm dealing with right now.

I'm having clearance issues with the upper radiator hose and the pulley for the procharger. I have a 4 core BeCool alum radiator that I ended up trimming rougly 3/4" off of the neck (The picture showing the radiator is before I trimmed the neck & didnt have the transmission in). The pictures below were took without out the transmission being in the car, so the motor was tilted back toward the firewall. Once I put the transmission back in and got everything bolted up I had even less room to deal with, currently I have 2" worth of room from the face of the radiator (not including water neck) to the face of the pulley on the supercharger. I went down to the local auto parts store and found a hose with the tightest 90 deg. bend possible. I still had to use zip ties to try hold the hose away from the pulley. Which works, but once the motor warms up, the zip ties expand and the hose starts to rub on the pulley. Looking for suggestions or ideas. Only other thing I can think to do is pull the radiator out and have a alum. 90 elbow welded on, or if a elbow doesn't fit, I was going to take two pieces of alum pipe and weld them together at the 45 deg. miter joint as a last resort.

I will try to take a another picture today to show what I currently have.

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

I had the same ussue, I welded a -20 bung to the side of the radiator and ran a -20 hose

TransAmGTA88

Do you have a picture? I think I know what your talking about, if I welded a fitting on the side of the radiator I would still need a 180 elbow?

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

I checked, no pic...could take one this weekend.

TTOP350

iTrader: (8)

It seems to me that I did one or 2 of these b4 and I did it the hard way.
I had a fitting welded on that points the hose towards the driver side of the car and went around the procharger then to the swivle Tstat neck.
May not be the best solution but its still on the road as his DD.
Sorry no pix..
The other one I think we went striat down with the hose then to the center of the car and back up to the factory Tstat neck.

TransAmGTA88

Some better pics.

ZZ3 Z28

I had similar problem like you with a Be-Cool rad taking up space in front of the a/c unit compressor. Not as drastic as yours but still something I had to address. Be-Cool suggested welding a 90 degree bend on but I looked for some other remedy. I found a 90 degree bend silicon rad hose from Speedway Motors along with a coupling got me enough room so the rad hose didn't hit the comrpessor. Now, what you have is a heckuva lot less clearance than I ran into by far. Even though I searched for a fix to my lesser problem I can't remember seeing anything that would help your dilemma. Sorry. I'll keep it in mind in case I run across anything for ya'.

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

Here ya go

TransAmGTA88

Thank you for posting your pictures! I did come up with a solution over the weekend. Sorry the text is so small in the attached picture.

I'll post a updated picture soon.

Beater79TA

I had the same problem (maybe worse with a cog drive) and had Ron Davis Racing modify one of their radiators to point the hose fitting up instead of toward the engine. There is plenty of room between the hood and the top of the radiator to lay the hose there and connect it this way.

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

Yes, that's what I did on my camaro:

TransAmGTA88

Do you have any issues with keeping the motor cool? I still have my A/C in the car and I feel like the condensor is choking my radiator off from being able to keep the car cool. I have a BeCool alum. radiator and dual flex-o-lite fans.

Beater79TA

I have major issues with the dash gauge being off by almost 80 degrees from what the ECM is seeing. Other than that, I don't drive the car enough to know if I have any issues or not. Living in Phoenix, I suspect I would have issues in the summer if I got stuck in traffic but it just isn't driven that often in the heat. I can sympathize on the concern though. I have a 3 inch thick front mount intercooler, the AC condensor, and the 3 inch Ron Davis radiator for the fans to pull through even with a 2 inch gap between the intercooler and the condensor. With low profile fans required to fit in the space between the cog pulleys and the radiator, I'm limited to the CFM I can pull across the entire assembly.

TransAmGTA88

After reading the reply about the dash gauge being off, I decide to barrow a buddies mechanical guage and see if I had any difference from the guage inside the car, compared to the mechanical guage. There is difference of 40 dergress, which tells me the car has actually been running cooler than I had orginally thought....BIG RELEIF!!! The sending unit for the gauge in the car is located on my alum heads, which makes me think that the sender could be possibly hitting the head inside or real close. I had the sending unit for the mechancial gauge located in the intake manifold.


Also, attached a updated picture of the upper radiator hose.

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

Mine stays cool, no prob. Don't have AC and stuck the 2 largest spal fans in there that would fit. Once those things come on the temp drops to the T stat temp almost immediately (standing still)

Still not liking the hose setup. If I were you I'd tajke the rad out and take it to a shop that can do AC welding and have them weld a bung or a new outlet on it.

Beater79TA

Here's a pic of how mine is set up. I've change the upper hose since this one but you can see how close the cog drive is to teh radiator. Ron Davis did a nice job of turning the hose fitting up when I ordered their 3rd gen radiator and there's plenty of room between the radiator and the hood for the hose to lay without compressing it.

TransAmGTA88

Is that a F-1 procharger?

Beater79TA

The one in my picture is a F1A. Fits nicely in the D1SC bracket and makes an ungodly amount of noise with the cog belt system. This is the setup you want to attract a crowd at a car show but not to try and be stealthy on the street.

TransAmGTA88

How much trouble or work was it to install the crank pulley and still be able to run your serpentine belt? Also what do you have your timing set at? How much boost are currently running?

Beater79TA

Crank pulley went on easy enough. Just 3 really long bolts. I expect it is the same installation fun as the 8 or 12 rib setup to get the bolts lined up and tightened. it can't be done with the serpentine belt still tight though because the crank pulley is bolted on with the same 3 bolts. The pulley on the blower is the ATI sprag clutch model so there isn't any load on the crank when you shut down the motor. The blower can spin down separate from the engine. The biggest issue around the serpentine belt will be changing the at least one bracket bolt has to come off to do it. Getting replacement cog belts in is fun too since a 50mm wide belt doesn't flex much to stuff it between the pulleys and the radiator to get it into position to slide on the pulleys.

The highest boost number I've seen with the current set of pulleys is 13 psi out on the street. I really should consider getting it dyno tuned or at least a dyno number again since the last run was at 7 psi and it maxed out at 500 hp and started blowing out the spark above 5500 rpm because I didn't have the gap tight enough. I can't complain much since the engine is about 8.5:1 compression and made 295 hp NA before we bolted the blower on and did the blower tune.

Timing is controlled by an Accel Gen 7 DFI unit. If you want the numbers, I can take a screenshot out of the software. The tune was originally done by AZTPI (no longer in business) and verified by Brian Herter from PCM4Less when he did a dyno day with our local car club. But that was still on the 7 psi pulley combo.

TransAmGTA88

Got ya, I just installed the D1SC a couple of months ago, just trying to see how my set up compares to other people. I have a 850 CFM C&S blow thru carb, little be diff. set up than what you have by the looks of the picture.

Beater79TA

Just a bit different. Mine's a HSR with 72lb/hr injectors controlled by the DFI computer. The running joke about the car is that GM's contribution ended with the sheet metal. Almost everything else is aftermarket now.

Ozz1967

iTrader: (4)

Not to hijack the thread, but where did you go to have that -20an fitting put in? Also, did youhave teh fitting welded to the T-stat housing or did you find one made that way?

Kory-88Iroc 350 tpi

iTrader: (1)

I will be dealing with this problem shortly. I'm installing a vortech s trim on my lt1 swap. I was thinking of running a dual pass radiator with both the inlet and outlet on the pass side. Alot of ls1 swap guys have these. Might be easier than modding a current radiator.
Kory